Thursday, October 31, 2013

‘Facts and truth are the weapons that will win because in the end,
no one can live with the men of lies and violence.’ [1]

Christopher
King

This question is
inseparable from the main question: “Why
do Palestinians write their own history?” Sport has always been an essential
part of Palestinian history and culture: it has been a mirror that reflected
political processes in Palestine. Before Nakba (i.e. catastrophe) of
1948, there were some 65 athletic clubs in Palestine; approximately 55 of them
were members of the Arab Palestine Sports Federation (PSF established in 1931,
re-established in 1944).

Palestinian modern history is unique, not only because the Nakba,
and the expulsion of the 750,000 refugees from their land, but also because
this history consistently has been a subject of dispossession, concealment and
distortion. Together these successes of Zionism have produced a prevailing view
of the question of Palestine that almost totally favors the victor, and takes
hardly any account of the victim. [2] By
what moral or political standard are we expected to lay aside our claims to our
national existence, our land, our human
rights? In what world is there no argument when an entire people is told that
it is juridically absent, even as armies are led against it, campaigns
conducted against even its name, history changed so as to "prove" its
nonexistence? [3]

Israel always sought to
put an aura on its crimes committed against Palestinians. As part of this aura,
in order to justify its crimes, Israel planned to erase the history of
Palestinians just as it has erased their villages. This war against history
resulted in the loss and the ‘imprisonment’ of all historical documents. Today
Israel is waging an electronic war to improve its distorted image in the world.
Of course, this war includes misinformation about sports.

Reading the Zionist literature on the history of Palestine as well
as the history of sports in Palestine, one might get the impression that
Palestine was void of Palestinians. If such histories do mention the
Palestinians, they invariably try to depict these Palestinians as lacking any
cultural, social, or athletic aspect. They appear to assert that the Zionists
populated the region, and graced it with civilization and modernization — that
they brought sports and culture to the primitive people who had hitherto known
nothing of either of these refinements. Efforts such as these to distort
reality and rewrite history are not new. Indeed, the Zionist athletic
leadership worked to marginalize the Palestinians in the sports sector.

Probably, the euphoria of victory, which the Israeli scholars
enjoyed throughout the years after 1948, inspired them to write history as
victors. As Christopher King mentioned in his fantastic article “Palestinians
Write Your History” ‘There is a clever saying that in warfare, history is written
by victors. Like many such aphorisms it is wrong. History is written by those
who write it.’

Fortunately,
with historians such as Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said and many others who have
undertaken the task of retrieving Palestinian history, the Palestinians
themselves may soon be victors. [4]

To a very large degree, of course, the Palestinian’s reality today
is dominated by what he has suffered directly at the hands of Zionism. There is
no evading that history and that actuality, just as there can be no Palestinian
future without a transcendence of it.[5] It
is impossibleto banish a history of any nation. Palestine and Palestinians are a
historical fact that could not be erased and hard to transcend. There could be proved without presenting millions of documents and facts. Palestinian newspapers such as Filastin (established 1911)
and Difa’ (established 1934) alone could be considered as historical
documents which refute the Zionist claim; such claims alleged that the
Palestinians lacked any cultural, social or athletic aspect.

Obtaining complete
knowledge about history of Palestine could not be accomplished without the
integration of all its aspects: political, economic, social and cultural (which
must include sports). At the same time history of sports could help in
perceiving Zionist political and cultural aspects. It is well known that sports
played a pivotal role in realizing the dream of the Jewish national home in
Palestine.

We need to write history to honor and immortalize those who devoted
their time and efforts for the sake of sports and social progress. In 1948,
members of the athletic clubs sacrificed their life for their homeland. The
well-known athlete Zaki al-Darhali, who played for the national selected team
as a left wing, and his colleague Said Shunneir secretary of PSF’s Jaffa
regional committee, were killed in the bombing of the social services center
[Saria] building in Jaffa by the Zionist military organizations.

After 1948, sports infrastructure was destroyed completely. 750,000
refugees scattered throughout the Diaspora, among them were tens of athletes.
In Lebanon (in 1950’s-1990’s) about 120 social-athletic clubs were established
in refugee camps. Under the Egyptian administration, sports in Sector Gaza
witnessed remarkable growth. In 1962, Palestine Football Association was
established, and many federations of various sports became members in
international federations. After 1967, in the West Bank and Sector Gaza,
social-athletic clubs became a beacon of freedom and resistance against the
Israeli occupation. Joining the International Olympic Committee and the
International Football Federation in the 1990’s, Palestinian sports, despite of
the obstacles set by the repugnant Israeli occupation, made a quantum leap in
all arenas : local, regional and International.

Palestinians through sports do not only struggle for freedom and an
independent state: they also seek to take part in advanced global civilization.
Preserving history is one of the indicators of civilization; for civilization
is the result of the accumulated efforts by individuals whose main concern is
progress. In 1946, the Egyptian physical education teacher Hussein Husni, who
served in Palestine for about fifteen years, wrote in Filastin: “Every
Palestinian has to know, that every penny he pays to encourage sports
renaissance, he buys nothing but glory for his homeland. Oh how precious is
glory.”

No comments:

Post a Comment

HISTORY OF PALESTINE SPORTS

Established in November 2009, this blog aims to introduce readers to the developments of sports in Palestine. HPS is concerned about highlighting and documenting Palestinian sports since the first decade of the 20th century to the present date, which will require contributions from all researchers and historians.For information, please contact;Issam Khalidiiskhalidi55@hotmail.com

Issam Khalidi, an independent scholar, lives in Monterey CA, US. Born in Jerusalem, Palestine. Received his PhD in 1987 from the Institute of Physical Culture, Moscow, Russia.

Articles and opinions published on this blog reflect the views of their authors.